เพลงยกจิตใจของเราได้แค่ระดับคลื่นของผู้แต่งเพลงเท่านั้น ไม่มากไปกว่านั้น ส่วนการนั่งสมาธิที่แท้จริงต้องอาศัยกรรมฐานของตัวเอง ไม่พึ่งพาเสียงเพลงหรือเสียงธรรมชาติซึ่งเป็นของนอกตัวและไม่อยู่ในกรรมฐาน 40 วิธีที่ครูบาอาจารย์สอนไว้เลยMusic can only lift the mind up to the level of the composer's own mental wave, never beyond it. Real meditation depends on having your own meditation anchor, not on music or nature sounds — which are external things, and appear in none of the 40 traditional meditation methods.
Someone asked: does meditating with background music differ from meditating in silence? And does it make a difference if the sound is natural — flowing water, rain, birdsong?
Music Only Lifts the Mind to Its Own Level
This depends a great deal on each person's temperament. Music is made from a wave of the composer's own mind — a backdrop that a human being creates. A person can only compose at the level of their own mental wave, so the melody that comes out sits at that same level. When we listen to it, it can only take us that far. If our own mind is lower than that level, listening to the music will lift it up to that level — but no higher, not beyond that wave. To rise higher we would need a different wave entirely. And because a melody itself rises and falls, our mind rises and falls along with it.
Meditating Without Music: You Need Your Own Meditation Anchor
What matters is having our own , rather than depending on this or that sound — such as a teacher's voice guiding us. A teacher teaches us the method, and we're meant to go and practise it ourselves, but instead we end up depending on the teacher's guiding voice, and when there's no voice leading us, we can't do it at all. In the old days there were no recordings, so people had to take the method they had learned and go sit and practise it themselves, relying on the inner knowing faculty, establishing that inner knowing, until it became fluent. Once fluent, the moment we set our attention, that feeling-state arises on its own, and we merge into it, absorb it, and become one with it.
Bhavana means “to bring into being, to make real.” When we fix attention on the Buddha image within, the image appears; when we set “Samma-Araham,” it appears. Once it has arisen, it moves along by its own mechanism. We repeat this until it becomes familiar, until it draws together into one.
Applied and Sustained Thought, and the Two Kinds of Liberation
Vitakka (applied thought) means using to direct and lift the attention onto the meditation anchor, staying fixed on it. Vicara (sustained thought) means reflecting on it with — mindfulness now working automatically — reflecting until it becomes one, until there is full, all-around knowing, unified. Liberation of mind () relies on exactly this: lifting the attention and reflecting, so as to draw the feeling-state together into one. It is developed continuously by this same principle.
Liberation by wisdom (pañña) also relies on the mind, and on the same applied and sustained thought — but here they are directed at and understanding of the matter at hand, reflecting back and forth in order to know and understand. Merit is drawn in to cleanse away the elements that obscure — the elements of — until they are gone. Understanding then arises from ; system cleanses away the defilements, the obscuring elements, until they are gone, and the inner knower comes in to explain it to us. It can feel as though we're just thinking it up ourselves, but that is simply how it works.
This is why we need our own meditation anchor — one we can use anywhere, at any moment, whether standing, walking, sitting, or lying down. Without one, we have to keep depending on someone leading the sitting, and our feeling-state never really comes to understand the substance of the practice; it can't develop very far, because we never get to train a meditation anchor into being, into one that has truly become unified with us.
Nature Sounds, and the Four Foundations: Body, Feeling, Mind, Mental Objects
Natural sounds — flowing water, rain, birdsong — are external things; they keep changing. The Buddha taught the monks to clearly know four things: body, feeling, mind, and mental objects. At : the breath, or whatever is tied to the body — being aware of the body itself, aware at the centre of the body, aware of “rising” and “falling,” aware of posture. The body has to be brought together with the mind.
Once brought together with the body, we may fix attention on the body or on the mind. Fixing on the mind, we come to know feeling — pleasant, unpleasant, neutral — and to recognise which mood is currently ruling the mind. Or we fix attention on the mind itself, the voice of all our thoughts. As for mental objects, these are the result of s — the mind's mood as it appears in each present moment. It is precisely in each present moment that truth appears; truth does not lie in the past, and it does not lie in the future. Information remains just information, but truth abides only in each present moment.
To reach the truth we must abide in the present moment at the body, at feeling, at the mind, at mental objects — training all four, so as to know and understand them as they really are. Then we become able to realise both and by wisdom. Liberation of mind makes the mind and settled, unified with the inner knower. Coming to know and understand the truth of life is the result of liberation by wisdom.
Samatha means fixing attention so as to become one with that feeling-state. Liberation by wisdom, or , means fixing attention — applied and sustained thought — so as to know and understand things as they really are in each present moment, understanding and reaching the truth in whatever appears in that moment.
Don't Stray Beyond the 40 Methods
There are 40 traditional meditation methods — don't reach for anything outside them. We belong to a special lineage of , so we need to train according to what our teachers have taught, because however many lifetimes we are born into, they teach the same thing. If we train the way they teach, it becomes easy. If we trained this way in a past life, it's easy in this one; if we train this way in this life, then in the next life we'll still have to learn and train again from the start — but it will be easy again all the same. Not holding to what the teachers have taught only makes things harder.
As for the sound of flowing water, rain, or birdsong — don't reach for them. They are external sounds. None of the 40 meditation methods involve any of this — not a single one.
A Guiding Voice Is Only a Tool, Not Your Own Practice
Nowadays on YouTube there are many recordings of a senior monk's guided meditation with background music edited in. What such teaching contains actually comes in two forms. The first is teaching so that we know and understand the method of practice — we listen to understand, then go practise it ourselves. The second is teaching so that we understand reality — teaching so we come to know and understand the truth, which frees us from not-knowing, from ignorance. This second kind gives rise to liberation by wisdom.
As for the principles of and the methods of meditation practice, we listen, then take the method and the principle and put them to use so that we come to have our own meditation anchor. It isn't that we must keep listening forever. Some people keep listening to the teacher's voice all the time, and when there's no voice, they can't practise at all. Then when will they ever have their own meditation anchor, when the method has already been given? Instead of taking it and practising on their own, they only practise while the teacher is actively teaching; if the teacher isn't teaching, they can't do it. That isn't the way it should be.